Watercolor

    Last semester, I took a watercolor painting class with one of my favorite professors, William Mancuso. This course turned out to be my favorite class I’ve ever taken at ONU. Not only was I loving every bit of what we were doing, I was also being taught painting skills I never knew I needed. Mancuso has a different teaching method than most professors and this is another reason why I enjoyed this class so much. 

    William Mancuso has been teaching at Ohio Northern for many years and declared the start of his retirement after the 2021-2022 school year. The first class I took at ONU was Literacy Foundations with Mancuso and that was the only class I’ve taken with him, so after his retirement announcement I knew I had to take one more class with him before he left. Watercolor was a whole different vibe than past classes. We were given a 3” x 5” notebook to fill with our paintings. Other art professors like to work on 3-5 big projects a semester, however, Mancuso focused on multiply small projects. He said, “Working small everyday will show more progress than working big once a month” This was a big motivation for me because I have a very low attention span so I was excited to do my watercolor homework knowing it would take less than 10 minutes. 

    At the start of the semester, we practiced basic painting and sketching techniques such as adding shading and light, cross hatching, and blending watercolor. We learned a lot about drawing exactly what you see with your perspective on different objects. He taught us the importance of angles of room and chair shapes, plus so much more. After learning the basic techniques for watercolor, we moved to painting people and landscape areas like you’re entire kitchen or bedroom. After working on 1-3 paintings a day through out the semester, my peers and I had built a 150 paged book portfolio of all the watercolor pieces we worked on. 

    I am so grateful I had the opportunity to take one last class with Professor Mancuso and learn the amazing techniques and art styles he used everyday. After taking this class my perspective of art had completely changed for the better and I know I will use the skills taught in this class for the rest of my art career.